The growth of Unicode over time

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This graph shows the number of defined code points in unicode from its first
release in 1991 to the preset; the last data point is the number of code points
in Unicode 6.2 plus all characters from the "pipeline table" of proposed new
characters (retrieved January 2013). However, it is likely that only a subset
of those characters will be in the next unicode standard.

Unicode is organized in 17 planes with a total of 1,112,064 code points; of
those, two planes (131,072 code points) are specified for private use, so
future Unicode standards can assign a total of 980992. Almost 13% of these
code points have a present or proposed use.

Unlike the allocation of internet addresses, it seems likely that the
allocation of Unicode code points is likely to already be slowing down. On the
other hand, there sure are a lot of code points in the pipeline, as evidenced
by the large uptick at the end of the graph. Personally, I'd bet against
actually exhausting Unicode in my lifetime, as long as it only includes
terrestrial languages. If the aliens come to earth and we try to add their
scripts to unicode, all bets are off.